Category: Adwords

Currently, there is no simple step-by-step checklist offered by google for merchants to guarantee a position on to any of the google-shopping lists, despite being asked many many times before; there is simply no such feature and the details have so far never been articulated publicly.

Results are mainly determined by the bid (budget) and quality over time.

Generally, any technique that google has indicated may help improve quality can also improve performance and will therefore, also increase the chances that a merchant will show within the left-hand-side lists on google-shopping.

Adjusting campaigns and budgets, especially ones that ensure that a budget is not depleted, is certainly one technique that will help with ad-rank and overall performance and may help improve the probability that a merchant may show within the left-hand-side seller-list.

Both product reviews and ratings and seller reviews and ratings are also
good techniques to improve overall quality and performance and therefore
greatly increases the probability that a merchant may be shown within the
left-hand-side lists over time.

Adjusting the title and description to be shown within a broader range of
search-terms can help impressions, quality, and may increase the chances
that a merchant will show within the left-hand-side seller-list — if that is the intended, or rather the only goal; however, this and other similar techniques may also have the unintended consequence of resulting in more clicks from less relevant or irrelevant searches and therefore potentially wasted clicks, and a decrease in conversions over time.

Also, the submitted data should match the landing-page data and many
automated systems use landing-page data to create an automated feed;
so, always consider changing the site’s landing-page first; especially since
a submitted title or description that is not essentially identical to the (link)
landing-page, displayed details, is a policy violation.

Many of the lists, other than the seller-list, are also influenced by item_group_id and the corresponding variant attributes — especially color, material, and pattern — and if these values are accurate with respect to the image_link details.

A best-practice is to always measure performance and overall results before, during, and after, making any such changes to the submitted data, the website, or the campaign.

However, google is constantly experimenting with all the various features and details within google-shopping — so none of these techniques will necessarily guarantee a position within any of left-hand-side lists, long-term.

A single search can sometimes result in hundreds or thousands of potential merchants but there is only room for 5-20 or so, depending on the context; even if google did not make any feature changes over time, a user’s interactions can greatly influence outcomes — especially which (left-hand-side) options are being selected by users over time, which search-terms are being used, and a user’s search-history over time, can greatly influence results.

What one user sees (in a seller-list) is not necessarily what another user sees.

Creating a new id simply forces a new product to be indexed — changing an existing product’s id value will remove its history. \

Duplicating any physical item listing however, such as by submitting
the same item with different id, is a policy violation and is grounds for a disapproval or suspension from the program, at any time.

Global-trade-data values (brand, mpn, gtin) must be submitted as assigned by the brand-manufacturer and any merchant manipulation of global-trade-data is also a policy violation and grounds for a disapproval or suspension from the program, at any time.

Any one serious violation, or any continued violation, of any policy can result in a suspension from the program, at any time — some suspensions are permanent.

When we optimize campaigns that are limited by budget there are certain steps we can follow to improve performance. These steps are the most basic optimization procedures, but without them, you would be throwing your money away.

Once we have determined that our campaigns are not performing to their max potential because of lack of funds, we must decide how to fix this.

The first thing to consider is, are you experiencing a positive return on your investment? If so, then go ahead and up your budget. Simple as that!

However, if you have not yet reached a positive ROI, consider the following actions to help you get there:

Use Ad Scheduling

One of the great things about AdWords is that it provides you with almost unlimited amounts of information. One of those pieces of information is the ability to know when conversions occur.

And this is where ad scheduling can help you bring down costs. For example, recently, one of the campaigns we handle was severely limited by budget; ads rarely showing past 2 pm.

Upon analyzing traffic, a pattern emerged: we identified that clicks at the beginning of the day (8 am – 12 pm) were almost 50% more expensive than later in the day.

Is this due to increased competition in early hours where all budgets are starting fresh? Do more businesses choose these hours to advertise?

Whatever the case, scheduling our ads from 6 am to 8 am and then from 12 pm onwards has allowed us to show our ads later in the day and increase a number of customer calls.

Is ad scheduling right for you? It more than likely is. When analyzing the data, be sure to use a sufficient date range to ensure a complete picture of your traffic.

Decrease Bids To Place In Lower Positions

Sometimes, AdWords managers, especially those still green behind the ears, insist on being in top position. To them, being first means being best. Well, that’s not the case in AdWords.

The top position will oftentimes be the most expensive and least productive position to be in.

By decreasing your bid, and position, you will be paying less per click. This means that if before you were bringing in 30 clicks per day with a $60 budget ($2 CPC), by bringing down bids to $1.5, you can generate 40 clicks. That’s a 33% increase in clicks!

More clicks mean more visitors to your site and more potential customers. Review your campaigns and consider running a test for 2 weeks where you bring down bids and compare conversions to previous periods. You might be surprised with the results!

Pause Non-Converting Keywords

This strategy should only be undertaken if you have conversion and call tracking installed on your account. If you do not, please don’t try this at home.

Before you begin to pause keywords, you need to make sure they are not generating online conversions or phone calls.

A great way to keep track of which keywords are converting (online and offline) is to import your call tracking data into analytics and then into AdWords.

You can then label those keywords in AdWords to ensure you don’t pause any keywords that have converted in the past.

After identifying those non-converting keywords, you can pause them, allowing your converting keywords more budget to perform. This will result in a boost to your sales and ROI.

Pause High CPC Keywords

As I mentioned above, top position is oftentimes the most expensive and the least productive position to be in, except when it’s not.

These high-ranking keywords may be among the most expensive in your campaign but may be bringing in conversions.

At this point, we want to analyze the Cost Per Acquisition of these keywords and determine whether our budget may be better utilized by keywords that convert at a lower price.

If the answer is yes, then we can pause those keywords and see our sales increase.

Add Negative Keywords

An oldie, but goodie… When reaching daily budget, make sure that you are only showing up for relevant searches.

Negative keywords not only stretch out your budget, but they increase your campaign’s CTR, which will improve your Quality Score and decrease your Costs Per Click, resulting in more clicks for your budget.

The above steps are all meant to decrease your Cost Per Click and provide more bang for your buck. But as always, they should be performed with sufficient data to ensure the desired outcome.

Make sure you have the necessary tracking tools in place to measure account performance.

If you find you have decreased your overall spend, but have also decreased your traffic, or worse your conversions, review your actions and make the necessary changes to increase performance.

Whether you use AdWords to increase sales, generate leads, or drive other valuable customer activity, it’s a good idea to measure your return on investment (ROI). Knowing your ROI helps you evaluate whether the money you’re spending on AdWords advertising is going to a good cause: healthy profits for your business.

How ROI Works

ROI is the ratio of your net profit to your costs. It’s typically the most important measurement for an advertiser because it’s based on your specific advertising goals and shows the real effect your advertising efforts have on your business. The exact method you use to calculate ROI depends upon the goals of your campaign.

One way to define ROI is:

(Revenue – Cost of goods sold) / Cost of goods sold

Let’s say you have a product that costs $100 to produce, and sells for $200. You sell 6 of these products as a result of advertising them on AdWords, so your total cost is $600 and your total sales is $1200. Let’s say your AdWords costs are $200, for a total cost of $800. Your ROI is:

($1200 – $800) / $800

= $400 / $800

= 50%

In this example, you’re earning a 50% return on investment. For every $1 you spend, you get $1.50 back.

For physical products, the cost of goods sold is equal to the manufacturing cost of all the items you sold plus your advertising costs, and your revenue is how much you made from selling those products. The amount you spend for each sale is known as cost per conversion.

If your business generates leads, the cost of goods sold is just your advertising costs, and your revenue is the amount you make on a typical lead. For example, if you typically make 1 sale for every 10 leads, and your typical sale is $20, then each lead generates $2 in revenue on average. The amount it costs you to get a lead is known as cost per acquisition.

Why ROI matters

By calculating your ROI, you can find out how much money you’ve made by advertising with AdWords. You can also use ROI to help you decide how to spend your budget. For example, if you find that a certain campaign is generating a higher ROI than others, you can apply more of your budget to the successful campaign and less money to campaigns that aren’t performing well. You can also use ROI data to try improve the performance of the less successful campaigns.

Use conversions to measure ROI

To identify your ROI, you first need to measure conversions, which are customer actions that you believe are valuable, such as purchases, signups, web page visits, or leads. In AdWords, you can use the free conversion tracking tool to help track how many clicks lead to conversions. Conversion tracking can also help you determine the profitability of a keyword or ad, and track conversion rates and costs-per-conversion.

Tip

Many AdWords advertisers use Google Analytics to track conversions. It’s a free web analytics tool that helps you learn how your customers interact with your website. Learn more about importing conversions from Google Analytics..

Once you’ve started to measure conversions, you can begin to evaluate your ROI. The value of each conversion should be greater than the amount you spent to get the conversion. For example, if you spend $10 on clicks to get a sale, and receive $15 for that sale, you’ve made money ($5) and received a good return on your AdWords investment.